Shopping on line can be easy, simple and save you lots of money. It can also take a lot of your time, frustrate you, and result in unwanted purchases. Now the same can be said for regular high street shopping, but with the vast opportunity presented by the Internet it will pay you to spend a few minutes reading this and understanding how to better optimize your Persian Language shopping experience:

1. Compare - without doubt the biggest advantage that the Persian Language offers shoppers today is the ability to compare thousands of Persian Language at a time. This is a great thing, but not necessarily all the time! Too much can be daunting at times so take advantage of the great comparison sites and where possible let them do the hard work for you.

2. Research - if it has been said it will be on the internet. Ignorance is no longer a justifiable reason for buying the wrong thing. Take the time to research in detail everything that you could possible want to know about

3. Testimonials - don't know anybody that has bought a Persian Language? Wrong! If the Persian Language is good the internet will let you know. Use the Internet as a friend and get testimonials before you buy.

4. Questions - Got a question about Persian Language then search the Forums, FAQ's, Blogs etc. Don't be afraid to ask .....

5. Reputation - Never heard of the company selling Persian Language? Don't worry, no reason why you should know every company in the world, but you know someone that does! Use the internet to find out what people are saying about Persian Language and build up a picture of their reputation for sales, returns, customer service, delivery etc.

6. Returns - still worried that even after all of the above your Persian Language wont be what you want? Check out the returns policy. There is so much competition now that someone, somewhere is bound to offer the terms that you are comfortable with.

7. Feedback - happy with your Persian Language then let people know, after all you are depending on others people input in your buying decision, so why not give a little back.

8. Security - check for the yellow padlock on the Persian Language site before you buy, and the s after http:/ /i.e. https:// = a secure site

9. Contact - got a question about Persian Language, or want to leave a comment then check out the sites contact page. Reputable companies have them and respond.

10. Payment - ready to pay for your Persian Language, then use your credit card or PayPal! Be aware of companies that don't accept them, there may be genuine reasons but given the huge amount of choice you have when buying online there is no reason at all not to buy via credit card or PayPal.



{{Infobox Language|name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=|image=|caption=fɒːɾˈsiː in Perso-Arabic script (Nasta`liq script style)|states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and areas of Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Also in various Iranian/Persian/Afghani Iranian diaspora, specifically USA, UAE and Turkey.], Central Asia|fam3=[Iranian languages|fam4=Western Iranian languages|fam5=Southwestern Iranian languages|nation= Afghanistan#Dialects and close languages
[Iran
Tajikistan#Dialects and close languages|agency=[Academy of Persian Language and Literature
Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan) is an [Indo-European languages language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It is derived from the language of the ancient Persian people. It is part of the Iranian languages branch of the Indo-European languages family.

Persian and its varieties have official-language status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. According to CIA World Factbook, based on old data, there are approximately 62 million native speakers of Persian in Iran, CIA Factbook: Iran Afghanistan, CIA Factbook: Afghanistan Tajikistan CIA Factbook: Tajikistan and Uzbekistan CIA Factbook: Uzbekistan and about the same number of people in other parts of the world speak Persian. UNESCO was asked to select Persian as one of its languages in 2006. BBC

Persian has been a medium for literary and scientific contributions to the Islamic world as well as the Western. It has had an influence on certain neighbouring languages, particularly the Turkic languages of Central Asia, Caucasus, and Anatolia. It has had a lesser influence on Arabic language and other languages of Mesopotamia.

For five centuries prior to the British colonization, Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent; it took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts in India and became the "official language" under the Mughal emperors. Only in 1843 did the subcontinent begin conducting business in English. Evidence of Persian's historical influence in the region can be seen in the extent of its influence on the languages of Hindustani language (resulting in Urdu), Marathi language, Punjabi language, Sindhi language, and Gujarati language, as well as the popularity that Persian literature still enjoys in the region. Classification Persian belongs to the List of Western Iranian languages of the Indo-Iranian languages branch of the Indo-European languages language family, and is of the Subject Object Verb type. Contrary to common belief, it is not a Semitic language. The Western Indo-Iranian group contains other related languages such as Kurdish language and Balochi language. The language is in the List of Southwestern Iranian languages Indo-Iranian group, along with the Tat language and Luri language languages.

Local names The Persian language is locally known as

Lexical confusion in the West between terms like Farsi, Dari and Tajiki often leads to an underestimation of the breadth of the influence of Persian in Southwest Asia, which is quite important and is a legacy of the millennia-long existence of a Persian cultural sphere, perhaps because this cultural sphere functioned differently than modern nationalism in the West.

Nomenclature Persian, the more widely used name of the language in English language, is an Anglicized form derived from Latin * < Latin < Greek language , a Hellenized form of Old Persian . Farsi is the arabicized form of Parsi, due to a lack of the /p/ phoneme in Standard Arabic. Native Persian speakers typically call it "Fārsi" in modern usage. In English, however, the language continued to be known as "Persian" during the first half of the 20th century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term 'Farsi' seems to have been first used in English in the mid-20th century, but has been condemned by some critics as an affectation.Article "Farsi", in Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, ed. John Simpson and Edmund Weiner, Clarendon Press, 1989. ISBN 0-19-861186-2. According to Pejman Akbarzadeh, "... many Persians migrating to the West (particularly to the USA) after the 1979 revolution continued to use 'Farsi' to identify their language in English and the word became commonplace in English-speaking countries."

The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has argued in an official pronouncement Pronouncement of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature that the name "Persian" is more appropriate, as it has the longer tradition in the western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. On the other hand, "Farsi" is also encountered frequently in the linguistic literature as a name for the language, used both by Iranian and by foreign authors,For example: A. Gharib, M. Bahar, B. Fooroozanfar, J. Homaii, and R. Yasami. Farsi Grammar. Jahane Danesh, 2nd edition, 2001. and is preferred by some.

The international language encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code "fa", as its coding system is based on the local names. The more detailed draft ISO 639-3 uses the name "Persian" (code "fas") for the larger unit ("macrolanguage") spoken across Iran and Afghanistan, but "Eastern Farsi" and "Western Farsi" for two of its subdivisions (roughly coinciding with the varieties in Afghanistan and those in Iran, respectively). Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: fas Ethnologue, in turn, includes "Farsi, Eastern" and "Farsi, Western" as two separate entries and lists "Persian" and "Parsi" as alternative names for each, besides "Irani" for the western and "Dari" for the eastern form. Ethnologue: Code PRS Ethnologue: Code PES

A similar terminology, but with even more subdivisions, is also adopted by the "Linguist List", where "Persian" appears as a subgrouping under "Southwest Western Iranian languages". Linguist List: Tree for Southwest Western Iranian Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, and RFE/RL use "Persian Service", in lieu of "Farsi Service". RFE/RL also includes a Tajik service, and Afghan (Dari) service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, and many of the leading scholars of Persian language. Kamran Talattof Persian or Farsi? The debate continues...

==Dialects and close languages==



There are three modern varieties for the standard Persian:



The three mentioned varieties are based on the classic Persian literature. There are also several local dialects in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan which slightly differ from the standard Persian. Lari (linguistics) (in Iran), Hazaragi (in Afghanistan), and Darwazi (In Afghanistan and Tajikistan) are examples of these dialects.

The Ethnologue offers another classification for dialects of Persian language. According to this source, dialects of this language include the following: Ethnologue - Language Family Trees - Persian

The following are some of the related languages of various ethnic groups within the borders of modern-day Iran:



Phonology Iranian Persian has six vowels and twenty-three consonants, including two affricates (ch) and (j).

Vowels Historically, Persian distinguished length: the long vowels , , contrasting with the short vowels , , respectively. Persian dialects and varieties differ in their vowels, more so than in their consonants.

Consonants {| class="wikitable"|-!! Labial consonant! Apical consonant! Palatal consonant! Velar consonant!Glottal consonant|- align="center"!Nasal consonant| || || || |||- align="center"!Stop consonant| || || || || |- align="center"!Fricative consonant| || || || || |- align="center"!Tap consonant| || || || |||- align="center"!Approximant consonant| || || || |||}

Grammar Morphology Suffixes predominate Persian morphology, though there are a small number of prefixes. Verbs can express tense and aspect, and they agree with the subject in person and number. There is no grammatical gender for nouns, nor are pronouns marked for natural gender.

Syntax Normal declarative sentences are structured as “(S) (PP) (O) V”. This means sentences can comprise optional Subject (grammar), prepositional phrases, and Object (grammar), followed by a required verb. If the object is specific, then the object is followed by the word r: and precedes prepositional phrases: “(S) (O + “r:”) (PP) V”.

Vocabulary Native word formation Persian makes extensive use of word building and combining affixes, stems, nouns and adjectives. Persian frequently uses derivational agglutination to word formation from nouns, adjectives, and verbal stems. New words are extensively formed by Compound (linguistics) – two existing words combining into a new one, as is common in German language. Professor Mahmoud Hessaby demonstrated that Persian can derive 226 million words.http://www.fareiran.com/no26/1.htm

External influence There are many loanwords in the Persian language, mostly coming from Arabic language, but also from English language, French language, German language, and the Turkic languages.

Persian has likewise influenced the vocabularies of other languages, especially Indo-Iranian languages like Hindi and Urdu, Turkic languages like Turkish language and Uzbek language, and Arabic language. Bashgah Several languages of southwest Asia have also been influenced, including Armenian language and Georgian language. Persian has even influenced the Malay language spoken in Malaysia. Many Persian words have also found their way into the English language.

See also: List of English words of Persian origin and Iranian languages#Comparison table of the Iranian languages

Orthography 's personal handwriting; a typical cursive Persian script.

The vast majority of modern Iranian Persian and Dari text is written in a form of the Arabic alphabet. In recent years the Latin alphabet has been used by some for technological or internationalisation reasons. Tajik language, which is considered by some linguists to be a Persian dialect influenced by Russian language and the Turkic languages of Central Asia, is written with the Cyrillic alphabet in Tajikistan (see Tajik alphabet).

Persian alphabet Modern Iranian Persian and Dari are normally written using a modified variant of the Arabic alphabet (see Perso-Arabic script) with different pronunciation and more letters, whereas the Tajik variety is typically written in a modified version of the Cyrillic alphabet.

After the conversion of Persian Empire to Islam (see Islamic conquest of Iran), it took approximately 150 years before Persians adopted the Arabic alphabet as a replacement for the older alphabet. Previously, two different alphabets were used, one for Middle Persian and one for Avestan, used for religious purposes, known as the Avestan alphabet (in Persian, Dîndapirak or Din Dabire—literally: religion script).

In modern Persian script, vowels generally known as short vowels (a, e, o) are usually not written; only the long vowels (y, u, â) are represented in the text. This, of course, creates certain ambiguities. Consider the following: kerm "worm", karam "generosity", kerem "cream", and krom "chrome" are all spelled "krm" in Persian. The reader must determine the word from context. It is worth noting that the Arabic system of vocalization marks known as harakat is also used in Persian, although some of the symbols have different pronunciations. For example, an Arabic damma is pronounced /u/, while in Iranian Persian it is pronounced /o/. This system is not used in mainstream Persian literature; it is primarily used for teaching and in some (but not all) dictionaries. It is also worth noting that there are several letters considered by native Persian speakers to be 'Arabic' despite the fact that these letters are present in the Persian alphabet. While the letters exist, the Arabic pronunciation of these letters is not generally used. Instead, they are pronounced the same as a similar Persian letter. As such, there are three functionally identical 'z' letters, three 's' letters, two 't' letters, etc.

Additions The Persian alphabet adds four letters to the Arabic alphabet:

{| class="wikitable" border="1" align="center" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="text-align: center"| Sound| Isolated form| Unicode name|-| |style="font-size: larger"| پ| Peh|-| (ch)|style="font-size: larger"| چ| Cheh|-| (zh)|style="font-size: larger"| ژ| Jeh|-| |style="font-size: larger"| گ| Gaf|}

(The Jeh sound is pronounced as in "measure", "fusion", or "azure".)

Variations The Persian alphabet also modifies some letters from the Arabic alphabet. For example, alef with hamza below ( إ ) changes to alif ( ا ); words using various hamzas get spelled with yet another kind of hamza (so that مسؤول becomes مسئول); and ta' marbuta ( ة ) usually, but not always, changes to he (letter) ( ه ) or taw (letter) ( ت ). Teh'marbuta is often used in Arabic to denote female gender. Persian nouns do not have gender, which may explain why the teh'marbuta never crossed over to the Persian alphabet.

The letters different in shape are:

{| class="wikitable" border="1" align="center" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="text-align: center"| Sound| original Arabic letter| modified Persian letter| name|-| |style="font-size: larger"| ك|style="font-size: larger"| ک| Kaf|-| (y) and , or rarely |style="font-size: larger"| ي or ى|style="font-size: larger"| ی| Yeh|}

Writing the letters in their original Arabic form is not typically considered to be incorrect, but is not normally done.

Latin alphabet

UniPers, short for the Universal Persian Alphabet (Pârsiye Jahâni) is a Latin-based alphabet created and popularized by Mohamed Keyvan, who used it in a number of Persian textbooks for foreigners and travellers.

The International Persian Alphabet (Pársik) is another Latin-based alphabet developed in recent years mainly by A. Moslehi, a comparative linguist. IPA2

Another Latin alphabet, based on the Uniform Turkic alphabet, was used in Tajikistan in the 1920s and 1930s. The alphabet was phased out in favour of Tajik alphabet#Cyrillic in the late 1930s.

Fingilish, or Penglish, is the name given to texts written in Persian using the Alphabets derived from the Latin#Basic Latin Alphabet. It is most commonly used in online chat, emails and Short Message Service applications. The orthography is not standardized, and varies among writers and even media (for example, typing 'aa' for the phoneme is easier on computer keyboards than on cellphone keyboards, resulting in smaller usage of the combination on cellphones).

Tajik alphabet advertisement for an academy.

The Cyrillic alphabet was introduced for writing the Tajik language under the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic in the late 1930s, replacing the Tajik alphabet#Latin that had been used since the Bolshevik revolution and the Perso-Arabic script that had been used earlier. After 1939, materials published in Persian in the Perso-Arabic script were banned from the country.

History Persian is an Iranian tongue belonging to the Indo-Iranian languages branch of the Indo-European languages family of languages. The oldest records in Old Persian date back to the great Persian Empire of the 6th century BC.

The known history of the Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods:

Old Persian Old Persian evolved from Proto-Iranian as it evolved in the Iranian plateau's southwest. The earliest dateable example of the language is the Behistun Inscription of the Achaemenid Darius I (r. 522 BCE - ca. 486 BCE). Although purportedly older texts also exist (such as the inscription on the tomb of Cyrus II at Pasargadae), these are actually younger examples of the language.Old Persian was written in Old Persian cuneiform script, a script unique to that language and is generally assumed to be an invention of Darius I's reign.

After Aramaic, or rather the Achaemenid form of it known as Imperial Aramaic, Old Persian is the most commonly attested language of the Achaemenid age. While examples of Old Persian have been found wherever the Achaemenids held territories, the language is attested primarily in the inscriptions of Western Iran, in particular in Fars Province "Persia" in the southwest, the homeland of the tribes that the Achaemenids (and later the Sassanids) came from.

In contrast to later Persian, written Old Persian had an extensively inflection grammar, with eight Grammatical case, each declension subject to both gender - masculine, feminine, neuter - and number - singular, plural, dual.

Middle Persian In contrast to Old Persian, whose spoken and written forms must have been dramatically different from one another, written Middle Persian reflected oral use, and was thus much simpler than its ancestor. The complex Grammatical conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded to a simple internal structure of Middle Persian; the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Instead, Middle Persian used prepositions to indicate the different roles of words, for example an -i suffix to denote a possessive "from/of" rather than the multiple (subject to gender and number) genitive caseforms of a word.

Although the "middle period" of Iranian languages formally begins with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the transition from Old- to Middle Persian had probably already begun before the 4th century. However, Middle Persian is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in Sassanid (224 - 651) inscriptions, so any form of the language before this date cannot be described with any degree of certainty. Moreover, as a literary language, Middle Persian is not attested until much later, to the 6th or 7th century. And from the 8th century onwards, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with the middle-period form only continuing in the texts of Zoroastrianism tradition.

The native name of Middle Persian was Parsik or Parsig, after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of Pars", Old Persian Parsa, New Persian Fars Province. This is the origin of the name Farsi as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following the collapse of the Sassanid state, Parsik came to applied exclusively to (either Middle or New) Persian that was written in Arabic script. From about the 9th century onwards, as Middle Persian was on the threshold of becoming New Persian, the older form of the language came to be erroneously called Pahlavi, which was actually but one of the writing systems used to render both Middle Persian as well as various other Middle Iranian languages. That writing system had previously been adopted by the Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Rouzbeh (Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa, 8th century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Farsi (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date.

Modern Persian Early Modern Persian Classic Persian The Islamic conquest of Persia marks the beginning of the modern history of Persian language and literature. It is known as the golden era of Persian.It saw world-famous poets and was for a long time the lingua franca of the eastern parts of Islamic world and of the Indian subcontinent. It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including Samanids, the Mughal Empires, Timurids, Ghaznavid, Seljuq, Safavid, Ottomans, etc.The heavy influence of Persian on other languages can still be witnessed across the Islamic world, especially, and it is still appreciated as a literary and prestigious language among the educated elite, especially in fields of music (for example Qawwali) and art (Persian literature). After the Arab invasion of Persia, Persian began to borrow many words and structures from Arabic language and as the time went by, a few words were borrowed from Mongolian language under the Mongolian empire.

Contemporary Persian Since the nineteenth century, Russian language, French language and English language and many other languages contributed to the technical vocabulary of Persian. The Iranian National Academy of Persian Language and Literature is responsible for evaluating these new words in order to initiate and advise their Persian equivalents. The language itself has greatly developed during the centuries. Due to technological developments, new words and idioms are created and enter into Persian as they do into any other language.

Examples {|!Persian !! Romanisation !! Gloss|-| همه ی افراد بشر آزاد به دنیا می‌آیند و از دید حیثیت و حقوق با هم برابرند, همه دارای اندیشه و وجدان می‌باشند و باید دربرابر یک دیگر با روح برادری رفتار کنند. || Hameye afrâde bašar âzâd be donyâ miyâyand va az dide heysiyat o hoquq bâ ham barâbarand. Hame dârâye andisheh o vejdân mibâšand va bâyad dar barabare yekdigar bâ ruhe barâdari raftâr konand. || All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.|}

—Article 1 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

See also

Notes Further reading
  • {{Harvard reference
    • | Last=Mace | First=John | Title=Persian Grammar: For reference and revision | Publisher=[London: Routledge-Curzon | Year=2003 -->.
  • {{Harvard reference
    • | Last=Schmitt | First=Rüdiger | Title=Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum | Publisher=[Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag | Year=1989 -->.
  • {{Harvard reference
    • | Last=Windfuhr | First=Gernot L. | Chapter=Persian | Editor=[Bernard Comrie | Title=The World's Major Languages | Publisher=[Oxford: Oxford University Press | Year=1987 -->.

    External links



    {{Infobox Language|name=Persian|nativename=|pronunciation=|image=|caption=fɒːɾˈsiː in Perso-Arabic script (Nasta`liq script style)|states= Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and areas of Uzbekistan and Pakistan. Also in various Iranian/Persian/Afghani Iranian diaspora, specifically USA, UAE and Turkey.], Central Asia|fam3=[Iranian languages|fam4=Western Iranian languages|fam5=Southwestern Iranian languages|nation= Afghanistan#Dialects and close languages
    [Iran
    Tajikistan#Dialects and close languages|agency=[Academy of Persian Language and Literature
    Academy of Sciences of Afghanistan) is an [Indo-European languages language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It is derived from the language of the ancient Persian people. It is part of the Iranian languages branch of the Indo-European languages family.

    Persian and its varieties have official-language status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. According to CIA World Factbook, based on old data, there are approximately 62 million native speakers of Persian in Iran, CIA Factbook: Iran Afghanistan, CIA Factbook: Afghanistan Tajikistan CIA Factbook: Tajikistan and Uzbekistan CIA Factbook: Uzbekistan and about the same number of people in other parts of the world speak Persian. UNESCO was asked to select Persian as one of its languages in 2006. BBC

    Persian has been a medium for literary and scientific contributions to the Islamic world as well as the Western. It has had an influence on certain neighbouring languages, particularly the Turkic languages of Central Asia, Caucasus, and Anatolia. It has had a lesser influence on Arabic language and other languages of Mesopotamia.

    For five centuries prior to the British colonization, Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent; it took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts in India and became the "official language" under the Mughal emperors. Only in 1843 did the subcontinent begin conducting business in English. Evidence of Persian's historical influence in the region can be seen in the extent of its influence on the languages of Hindustani language (resulting in Urdu), Marathi language, Punjabi language, Sindhi language, and Gujarati language, as well as the popularity that Persian literature still enjoys in the region. Classification Persian belongs to the List of Western Iranian languages of the Indo-Iranian languages branch of the Indo-European languages language family, and is of the Subject Object Verb type. Contrary to common belief, it is not a Semitic language. The Western Indo-Iranian group contains other related languages such as Kurdish language and Balochi language. The language is in the List of Southwestern Iranian languages Indo-Iranian group, along with the Tat language and Luri language languages.

    Local names The Persian language is locally known as

    Lexical confusion in the West between terms like Farsi, Dari and Tajiki often leads to an underestimation of the breadth of the influence of Persian in Southwest Asia, which is quite important and is a legacy of the millennia-long existence of a Persian cultural sphere, perhaps because this cultural sphere functioned differently than modern nationalism in the West.

    Nomenclature Persian, the more widely used name of the language in English language, is an Anglicized form derived from Latin * < Latin < Greek language , a Hellenized form of Old Persian . Farsi is the arabicized form of Parsi, due to a lack of the /p/ phoneme in Standard Arabic. Native Persian speakers typically call it "Fārsi" in modern usage. In English, however, the language continued to be known as "Persian" during the first half of the 20th century. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term 'Farsi' seems to have been first used in English in the mid-20th century, but has been condemned by some critics as an affectation.Article "Farsi", in Oxford English Dictionary, second edition, ed. John Simpson and Edmund Weiner, Clarendon Press, 1989. ISBN 0-19-861186-2. According to Pejman Akbarzadeh, "... many Persians migrating to the West (particularly to the USA) after the 1979 revolution continued to use 'Farsi' to identify their language in English and the word became commonplace in English-speaking countries."

    The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has argued in an official pronouncement Pronouncement of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature that the name "Persian" is more appropriate, as it has the longer tradition in the western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. On the other hand, "Farsi" is also encountered frequently in the linguistic literature as a name for the language, used both by Iranian and by foreign authors,For example: A. Gharib, M. Bahar, B. Fooroozanfar, J. Homaii, and R. Yasami. Farsi Grammar. Jahane Danesh, 2nd edition, 2001. and is preferred by some.

    The international language encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code "fa", as its coding system is based on the local names. The more detailed draft ISO 639-3 uses the name "Persian" (code "fas") for the larger unit ("macrolanguage") spoken across Iran and Afghanistan, but "Eastern Farsi" and "Western Farsi" for two of its subdivisions (roughly coinciding with the varieties in Afghanistan and those in Iran, respectively). Documentation for ISO 639 identifier: fas Ethnologue, in turn, includes "Farsi, Eastern" and "Farsi, Western" as two separate entries and lists "Persian" and "Parsi" as alternative names for each, besides "Irani" for the western and "Dari" for the eastern form. Ethnologue: Code PRS Ethnologue: Code PES

    A similar terminology, but with even more subdivisions, is also adopted by the "Linguist List", where "Persian" appears as a subgrouping under "Southwest Western Iranian languages". Linguist List: Tree for Southwest Western Iranian Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, and RFE/RL use "Persian Service", in lieu of "Farsi Service". RFE/RL also includes a Tajik service, and Afghan (Dari) service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, and many of the leading scholars of Persian language. Kamran Talattof Persian or Farsi? The debate continues...

    ==Dialects and close languages==



    There are three modern varieties for the standard Persian:



    The three mentioned varieties are based on the classic Persian literature. There are also several local dialects in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan which slightly differ from the standard Persian. Lari (linguistics) (in Iran), Hazaragi (in Afghanistan), and Darwazi (In Afghanistan and Tajikistan) are examples of these dialects.

    The Ethnologue offers another classification for dialects of Persian language. According to this source, dialects of this language include the following: Ethnologue - Language Family Trees - Persian

    The following are some of the related languages of various ethnic groups within the borders of modern-day Iran:



    Phonology Iranian Persian has six vowels and twenty-three consonants, including two affricates (ch) and (j).

    Vowels Historically, Persian distinguished length: the long vowels , , contrasting with the short vowels , , respectively. Persian dialects and varieties differ in their vowels, more so than in their consonants.

    Consonants {| class="wikitable"|-!! Labial consonant! Apical consonant! Palatal consonant! Velar consonant!Glottal consonant|- align="center"!Nasal consonant| || || || |||- align="center"!Stop consonant| || || || || |- align="center"!Fricative consonant| || || || || |- align="center"!Tap consonant| || || || |||- align="center"!Approximant consonant| || || || |||}

    Grammar Morphology Suffixes predominate Persian morphology, though there are a small number of prefixes. Verbs can express tense and aspect, and they agree with the subject in person and number. There is no grammatical gender for nouns, nor are pronouns marked for natural gender.

    Syntax Normal declarative sentences are structured as “(S) (PP) (O) V”. This means sentences can comprise optional Subject (grammar), prepositional phrases, and Object (grammar), followed by a required verb. If the object is specific, then the object is followed by the word r: and precedes prepositional phrases: “(S) (O + “r:”) (PP) V”.

    Vocabulary Native word formation Persian makes extensive use of word building and combining affixes, stems, nouns and adjectives. Persian frequently uses derivational agglutination to word formation from nouns, adjectives, and verbal stems. New words are extensively formed by Compound (linguistics) – two existing words combining into a new one, as is common in German language. Professor Mahmoud Hessaby demonstrated that Persian can derive 226 million words.http://www.fareiran.com/no26/1.htm

    External influence There are many loanwords in the Persian language, mostly coming from Arabic language, but also from English language, French language, German language, and the Turkic languages.

    Persian has likewise influenced the vocabularies of other languages, especially Indo-Iranian languages like Hindi and Urdu, Turkic languages like Turkish language and Uzbek language, and Arabic language. Bashgah Several languages of southwest Asia have also been influenced, including Armenian language and Georgian language. Persian has even influenced the Malay language spoken in Malaysia. Many Persian words have also found their way into the English language.

    See also: List of English words of Persian origin and Iranian languages#Comparison table of the Iranian languages

    Orthography 's personal handwriting; a typical cursive Persian script.

    The vast majority of modern Iranian Persian and Dari text is written in a form of the Arabic alphabet. In recent years the Latin alphabet has been used by some for technological or internationalisation reasons. Tajik language, which is considered by some linguists to be a Persian dialect influenced by Russian language and the Turkic languages of Central Asia, is written with the Cyrillic alphabet in Tajikistan (see Tajik alphabet).

    Persian alphabet Modern Iranian Persian and Dari are normally written using a modified variant of the Arabic alphabet (see Perso-Arabic script) with different pronunciation and more letters, whereas the Tajik variety is typically written in a modified version of the Cyrillic alphabet.

    After the conversion of Persian Empire to Islam (see Islamic conquest of Iran), it took approximately 150 years before Persians adopted the Arabic alphabet as a replacement for the older alphabet. Previously, two different alphabets were used, one for Middle Persian and one for Avestan, used for religious purposes, known as the Avestan alphabet (in Persian, Dîndapirak or Din Dabire—literally: religion script).

    In modern Persian script, vowels generally known as short vowels (a, e, o) are usually not written; only the long vowels (y, u, â) are represented in the text. This, of course, creates certain ambiguities. Consider the following: kerm "worm", karam "generosity", kerem "cream", and krom "chrome" are all spelled "krm" in Persian. The reader must determine the word from context. It is worth noting that the Arabic system of vocalization marks known as harakat is also used in Persian, although some of the symbols have different pronunciations. For example, an Arabic damma is pronounced /u/, while in Iranian Persian it is pronounced /o/. This system is not used in mainstream Persian literature; it is primarily used for teaching and in some (but not all) dictionaries. It is also worth noting that there are several letters considered by native Persian speakers to be 'Arabic' despite the fact that these letters are present in the Persian alphabet. While the letters exist, the Arabic pronunciation of these letters is not generally used. Instead, they are pronounced the same as a similar Persian letter. As such, there are three functionally identical 'z' letters, three 's' letters, two 't' letters, etc.

    Additions The Persian alphabet adds four letters to the Arabic alphabet:

    {| class="wikitable" border="1" align="center" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="text-align: center"| Sound| Isolated form| Unicode name|-| |style="font-size: larger"| پ| Peh|-| (ch)|style="font-size: larger"| چ| Cheh|-| (zh)|style="font-size: larger"| ژ| Jeh|-| |style="font-size: larger"| گ| Gaf|}

    (The Jeh sound is pronounced as in "measure", "fusion", or "azure".)

    Variations The Persian alphabet also modifies some letters from the Arabic alphabet. For example, alef with hamza below ( إ ) changes to alif ( ا ); words using various hamzas get spelled with yet another kind of hamza (so that مسؤول becomes مسئول); and ta' marbuta ( ة ) usually, but not always, changes to he (letter) ( ه ) or taw (letter) ( ت ). Teh'marbuta is often used in Arabic to denote female gender. Persian nouns do not have gender, which may explain why the teh'marbuta never crossed over to the Persian alphabet.

    The letters different in shape are:

    {| class="wikitable" border="1" align="center" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" style="text-align: center"| Sound| original Arabic letter| modified Persian letter| name|-| |style="font-size: larger"| ك|style="font-size: larger"| ک| Kaf|-| (y) and , or rarely |style="font-size: larger"| ي or ى|style="font-size: larger"| ی| Yeh|}

    Writing the letters in their original Arabic form is not typically considered to be incorrect, but is not normally done.

    Latin alphabet

    UniPers, short for the Universal Persian Alphabet (Pârsiye Jahâni) is a Latin-based alphabet created and popularized by Mohamed Keyvan, who used it in a number of Persian textbooks for foreigners and travellers.

    The International Persian Alphabet (Pársik) is another Latin-based alphabet developed in recent years mainly by A. Moslehi, a comparative linguist. IPA2

    Another Latin alphabet, based on the Uniform Turkic alphabet, was used in Tajikistan in the 1920s and 1930s. The alphabet was phased out in favour of Tajik alphabet#Cyrillic in the late 1930s.

    Fingilish, or Penglish, is the name given to texts written in Persian using the Alphabets derived from the Latin#Basic Latin Alphabet. It is most commonly used in online chat, emails and Short Message Service applications. The orthography is not standardized, and varies among writers and even media (for example, typing 'aa' for the phoneme is easier on computer keyboards than on cellphone keyboards, resulting in smaller usage of the combination on cellphones).

    Tajik alphabet advertisement for an academy.

    The Cyrillic alphabet was introduced for writing the Tajik language under the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic in the late 1930s, replacing the Tajik alphabet#Latin that had been used since the Bolshevik revolution and the Perso-Arabic script that had been used earlier. After 1939, materials published in Persian in the Perso-Arabic script were banned from the country.

    History Persian is an Iranian tongue belonging to the Indo-Iranian languages branch of the Indo-European languages family of languages. The oldest records in Old Persian date back to the great Persian Empire of the 6th century BC.

    The known history of the Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods:

    Old Persian Old Persian evolved from Proto-Iranian as it evolved in the Iranian plateau's southwest. The earliest dateable example of the language is the Behistun Inscription of the Achaemenid Darius I (r. 522 BCE - ca. 486 BCE). Although purportedly older texts also exist (such as the inscription on the tomb of Cyrus II at Pasargadae), these are actually younger examples of the language.Old Persian was written in Old Persian cuneiform script, a script unique to that language and is generally assumed to be an invention of Darius I's reign.

    After Aramaic, or rather the Achaemenid form of it known as Imperial Aramaic, Old Persian is the most commonly attested language of the Achaemenid age. While examples of Old Persian have been found wherever the Achaemenids held territories, the language is attested primarily in the inscriptions of Western Iran, in particular in Fars Province "Persia" in the southwest, the homeland of the tribes that the Achaemenids (and later the Sassanids) came from.

    In contrast to later Persian, written Old Persian had an extensively inflection grammar, with eight Grammatical case, each declension subject to both gender - masculine, feminine, neuter - and number - singular, plural, dual.

    Middle Persian In contrast to Old Persian, whose spoken and written forms must have been dramatically different from one another, written Middle Persian reflected oral use, and was thus much simpler than its ancestor. The complex Grammatical conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded to a simple internal structure of Middle Persian; the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Instead, Middle Persian used prepositions to indicate the different roles of words, for example an -i suffix to denote a possessive "from/of" rather than the multiple (subject to gender and number) genitive caseforms of a word.

    Although the "middle period" of Iranian languages formally begins with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the transition from Old- to Middle Persian had probably already begun before the 4th century. However, Middle Persian is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in Sassanid (224 - 651) inscriptions, so any form of the language before this date cannot be described with any degree of certainty. Moreover, as a literary language, Middle Persian is not attested until much later, to the 6th or 7th century. And from the 8th century onwards, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with the middle-period form only continuing in the texts of Zoroastrianism tradition.

    The native name of Middle Persian was Parsik or Parsig, after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of Pars", Old Persian Parsa, New Persian Fars Province. This is the origin of the name Farsi as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following the collapse of the Sassanid state, Parsik came to applied exclusively to (either Middle or New) Persian that was written in Arabic script. From about the 9th century onwards, as Middle Persian was on the threshold of becoming New Persian, the older form of the language came to be erroneously called Pahlavi, which was actually but one of the writing systems used to render both Middle Persian as well as various other Middle Iranian languages. That writing system had previously been adopted by the Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Rouzbeh (Abdullah Ibn al-Muqaffa, 8th century) still distinguished between Pahlavi (i.e. Parthian) and Farsi (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date.

    Modern Persian Early Modern Persian Classic Persian The Islamic conquest of Persia marks the beginning of the modern history of Persian language and literature. It is known as the golden era of Persian.It saw world-famous poets and was for a long time the lingua franca of the eastern parts of Islamic world and of the Indian subcontinent. It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including Samanids, the Mughal Empires, Timurids, Ghaznavid, Seljuq, Safavid, Ottomans, etc.The heavy influence of Persian on other languages can still be witnessed across the Islamic world, especially, and it is still appreciated as a literary and prestigious language among the educated elite, especially in fields of music (for example Qawwali) and art (Persian literature). After the Arab invasion of Persia, Persian began to borrow many words and structures from Arabic language and as the time went by, a few words were borrowed from Mongolian language under the Mongolian empire.

    Contemporary Persian Since the nineteenth century, Russian language, French language and English language and many other languages contributed to the technical vocabulary of Persian. The Iranian National Academy of Persian Language and Literature is responsible for evaluating these new words in order to initiate and advise their Persian equivalents. The language itself has greatly developed during the centuries. Due to technological developments, new words and idioms are created and enter into Persian as they do into any other language.

    Examples {|!Persian !! Romanisation !! Gloss|-| همه ی افراد بشر آزاد به دنیا می‌آیند و از دید حیثیت و حقوق با هم برابرند, همه دارای اندیشه و وجدان می‌باشند و باید دربرابر یک دیگر با روح برادری رفتار کنند. || Hameye afrâde bašar âzâd be donyâ miyâyand va az dide heysiyat o hoquq bâ ham barâbarand. Hame dârâye andisheh o vejdân mibâšand va bâyad dar barabare yekdigar bâ ruhe barâdari raftâr konand. || All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.|}

    —Article 1 of The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

    See also

    Notes Further reading
  • {{Harvard reference
    • | Last=Mace | First=John | Title=Persian Grammar: For reference and revision | Publisher=[London: Routledge-Curzon | Year=2003 -->.
  • {{Harvard reference
    • | Last=Schmitt | First=Rüdiger | Title=Compendium Linguarum Iranicarum | Publisher=[Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert Verlag | Year=1989 -->.
  • {{Harvard reference
    • | Last=Windfuhr | First=Gernot L. | Chapter=Persian | Editor=[Bernard Comrie | Title=The World's Major Languages | Publisher=[Oxford: Oxford University Press | Year=1987 -->.

    External links



    Persian language - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Persian (local names: فارسی IPA:  [fɒːrˈsi] or پارسی [pɒːrˈsi]; see Nomenclature) is an Indo-European language spoken in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan.

    Association for Persian Language, Linguistics and Computing
    Mailing lists and information for people working on different aspects of the Persian language.

    APL2C: Persian Speech and Natural Language Processing Home Page
    Speech and Natural Language Processing (NLP) Software for Persian Langugae . Persian Morphology System (July 1997) Interactive Software for teaching Persian Verb Conjugation (1997 ...

    BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iran blocks BBC Persian website
    The Iranian authorities start blocking the BBC's Persian language internet site, for the first time.

    BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Iran blocks BBC Persian website
    The Iranian authorities start blocking the BBC's Persian language internet site, for the first time.

    Persian language
    The ... Persian language Persian: fārsī Language spoken principally in Iran and Afghanistan.

    SOAS Language Centre - Persian Courses
    Learn Persian (Farsi - the principal language of Iran). Beginners and intermediate language courses at SOAS Language Centre, University of London

    Persian Language I
    SOAS U/G course description, Persian language ... Persian Language I Unit number: 155901242 Unit value: 1 unit Convenor/s: Narguess Farzad

    Persian language - Hutchinson encyclopedia article about Persian ...
    Hutchinson encyclopedia article about Persian language. Persian language. Information about Persian language in the Hutchinson encyclopedia.

    Persian Language
    Alternative Persian Dictionary (Hans-Christian Holm) [Not for those easily offended] Association for Persian Logic, Language & Computing. Colleges & Universities that teach Persian ...

     

    Persian Language



     
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